Life's small irritations

Haha! :grinning:

A few years ago, I had a particularly “irritating” pupil whom I, and others, affectionately referred to as “our little irritant” and we used that turn of phrase on school reports, but that’s because we couldn’t use “PITA”. That was when he was 11.

From 14, he graduated to full-on “little @~#*&”, when he’d insult staff, attack us too (throwing chairs etc.), bully/racketeer/attack other pupils etc. and bunk off at lunchtimes or afternoons to burgle surrounding properties or garden sheds.
Unfortunately, as the Tories have reduced capacity or shut down countless special needs schools, schools for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (behavioural/emotional/social difficulties and disorders), or SLD (severe learning difficulties), or SpLD, Schools for Specific Learning Difficulties (they go under different names), and what’s called PRUs (Pupil Referral Units), we had to keep him (and many others) till the bitter end, well almost as the SENco (Special Needs coordinator) finally managed to place that particular pupil somewhere more suitable than a mainstream educational setting.

Under the old Tories (the John Major years) and New Labour, a few comprehensives had an internal kind of PRU system for such pupils (I worked in 2 which had one, a good system), where they were more or less educated on a one-to-one basis which was much better for them and gave everyone else a breather (!), as it was an internal structure they’d be reintegrated into the school if sufficient progress was made, with a contract etc. and by and large it worked. But of course the Tories (and the severe budget cuts, and the sundry “efficiency savings”) made sure that this sensible system was scrapped.

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Not just @graham
:wink::zipper_mouth_face::joy:

I never commented on Jane’s post (nor was I aware of it until you tagged me) so have no idea what she is referring to…

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With you all the way on those Jane. IMO the inventors, or at least the producers, should be charged with endangering public health.

When he doesn’t get chicken with his croquettes my dog Jules has sardines. I have to get that long round shaped one of the 2 levers on a tin opener to start the ring pull off, and with jam jars, or anything else with a vacuum sealed lid it is even worse. Even though I bash it 3 times in the middle and use a lid clamp it still requires a firm grip on the body of the jar for leverage. I use to hold it on its side resting on the worktop but kept trapping my fingers when it gave way, so gave that up. Now I get a really firm grip with the gripper and press the handles against my chest while concentrating on turning the jar. :rage: :rage: :rage:

A friend says she punches a hole in the lid first, it does work but I worried about tiny slivers of metal in the jam. :slightly_frowning_face:

Regarding corned beef, which I love at suitable intervals, if you don’t concentrate hard on keeping the roll of metal on the key, allowing it to slip off it is a nightmare finding a way round the problem. Even if you succeed, all those sharp edges are lethal.

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Doesn’t help with sardines or corned beef but I have a version of this with two curved slots in (but this should work). You mount it under a kitchen cupboard and can use both hands to grip/turn the jar. With my weak grip, it is the only thing that works as none of the hand-held jobs do…

(I copied the pics separately as the amazon think doesn’t show them when embedded…)

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@Sue I live in a perfume free zone and have done for many years as OH is allergic to strong perfumes (they make him sneeze).

So, if he is out for the evening and comes home sneezing, that must make you very suspicious then? :slightly_frowning_face:

Ingenious Angela, I have a similar method in the shed with all my screw/nail jar lids screwed under movable beams so they can be moved out of the way when not needed. Wouldn’t work with different jam lids of course.

Good idea @David_Spardo - I shall mention it to my partner. My problem with his current ideas about storage is that he tends to put stuff in tins or opaque pots (shades of his father!) so when I’m looking for something I have to open every one to find it :roll_eyes:

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Buy him a Dymo labeller for his next Birthday or Christmas!
https://www.dymo.com/fr_FR/letratag-100h-1.html

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My wife and I’s life have been made far less tense with the recent discovery of the “double bec verseur Izy” (double pouring spout), best £10 spent in ages and deffo the best French invention since the helicopter.

So you can pour twice as quickly into the same glass! :champagne: :champagne: :wine_glass: :sunglasses:

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He’s got one @_Brian . Rarely uses it and even if he does, the contents change over time and the label doesn’t. I’m going to encourage him towards David’s solution! I don’t care what jhe does with his own stuff but anything I am likely to want to use is another matter altogether :rofl:

Latest MAJOR small irritation - spiders - or rather their drifting silk threads. Impossible to see, but just floating across every opening, every corner and between furniture and the walls. I’m hoovering the cottage for the third time! And by the time I guests arrive tomorrow evening - all being well - half of the threads will be back and our guests will think I haven’t looked after the place.

We never used to get this number of spiders in the UK.

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well Sue, console yourself with the fact that spiders don’t like damp so it’s a good point to make to visitors :wink:

and just be grateful you don’t have this problem to contend with…

Although I would question the reporting here… did Trish Wilcher actually say “scared shirtless” or were the actual words spoken something slightly different :thinking: :wink:

Ahah! At last, someone who, like me, hates bar codes stuck on things in her house!

I have ze solution!

I’ve found, if you do this as soon as you bring it home from the shop, you shouldn’t have any problem removing them! The label should be dry and only lightly applied. Stubborn ones take more warmth applied for longer

  1. You hold your hand, cupped, over and around the offending item. If possible not touching it, but in stubborn cases you may need to VERY gently, cover it with the heel of your hand, under the thumb (which is often warmer). Don’t apply ANY pressure! Make sure your hands are warm and dry.

  2. Maintain this position for at least a minute, whilst mentally willing the warmth from your hand to soften the glue under the label!!

You don’t usually need to have actual contact for this, and if you press, inadvertently, it can make it almost impossible to remove.
(See below for advice on this)

  1. After about a minute or so, remove your hand and very gently lift the tip of one corner of the label with your thumbnail, and then grip it using your opposing fingertip. It should lift easily, if not repeat step 1)

  2. Very gradually and gently, lift, whilst pulling the entire label, slowly, so you can see the strands of glue separating from the support, and try to lift it in a long, slow motion, as if you were peeling back a plaster from a wound.

Those of you die-hards who yank off plasters like depilatory leg-wax, or don’t use plasters, may need to.practice this skill.

  1. After the first few millimetres you’ll need to change your grip to finger and side of the thumb, or thumb and side of finger, gripping the whole width of the label, using the object it’s stuck to as leverage (with your thumb knuckle beside, not on, the label) to maintain control of the pull rate.

  2. Aim for a ‘lift-off’ position of ten to maximum 30 degrees off the horizontal.
    Keep the pull pressure steady, adjusting more to one side or the other if it shows signs of tearing. The aim is for it to lift in one entire piece!

  3. Once removed, rub your thumb lightly over the surface to remove any remaining traces of glue. Then you can wash your beaker or whatever in warm soapy water, if washable!

The intricate mechanics of this have taken me a lifetime to.perfect, but it seems that children, once shown, can be very good at it! The joys of domestic meta-mechanics!

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Children do not become ‘little irritants’ in a vacuum.
As a retired teacher, who’s worked in primary and secondary schools, and PRU’s (Pupils’ Referral Units) with EBD (Extremely Behaviourally Disturbed) children, I can say with a certain authority that my experience has taught me much about the kind of children who end up in this situation, and in some cases what has caused it.
Of course there are various experts and psychologists who have a fine range of interpretations and theories. However, having had first hand experience of this problem, as a child, as a teacher and as a grandparent, I would ask you to consider the effects of CPTSD, Childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This can happen where children are of very young parents, or raised in families where abusive relationships, or homelessness, can have left their mark.

Again, there are the hidden victims of accident, who perhaps had head injuries as children, or a period away from their parents, or have older siblings resentful of their position in the family, or younger siblings of whom they feel resentful because a new baby has replaced their prriveged place…

There are the victims of bullying or abuse, who themselves go on to lash out at others. There are empaths, highly sensitive or highly gifted and bored children, who feel the noise and clamour of a busy classroom even more acutely than teachers do at the end of the day. Remember, they haven’t chosen the career! Theirs is the experience of being a pupil enclosed with 30 others every day for years. In our adult lives, the nearest experience would be Forex traders on the stock exchange, or a cattle market. Few would choose it.

Children who cannot block out the experiences of those around them, who are empaths or intuitively gifted (so many kinds of intelligence have been discovered! At least five are screened these days) have years of pain going through mainstream school. Mostly they feel alienated, misunderstood, labelled, judged, with no possibility of evolution or development, as the minds of those caring for them are closed to the possibility of growth, and the only possibility is to change schools, by which time the damage has been done as their reputation follows them.

And then there are those with gaps in their social conditioning, or those with father’s or mother’s that couldn’t or cannot be there for them, or with parents who are themselves handicaped in some way… But frequently professionals will look for family problems when the children are in fact more affected by the pressures of school than those at home.

The pathology is often something that is produced by the environment. School can become a source of extra stress, a daily trigger, and for a child who needs kindness, guidance and reassurance, it can be torture. The ‘acting up’ can come from feeling a genuine dislike, or attitude, from students and staff, who can’t comprehend the reasons why a child becomes disturbed.

The tragedy is where professionals, in a coven of group politics, will ‘discuss’ (a ‘discus’ flung around as far as it will go, or ‘diss’ - disrespect - and ‘cuss’ - think badly of - English, the language of angels, some say, leaving semantic clues) a child behind closed doors. These discussions are fomenting attitudes, that inform other teachers, who are waiting, just waiting, for that kid to step out of line. And ‘that kid’ will feel the mindset of that teacher, and feeling judgement, sensing rejection, becomes more and more unreachable, then unteachable.

So the ‘little irritant’ becomes the pain in the neck, the couldn’t care less, the ‘anti-social’ (as school is, for them, the model of society, and teachers responsibility for modelling that is fine for most children, but not for the damaged ones). They grow up with ‘a chip on their shoulder’, and everyone points the finger, no one considers for an instant that they may be part of the problem. So the child, conditioned to feel an outsider, ends up in an EDB PRU where people try to turn that belief around, that they are abnormal, different, excluded and can never take part in &normal’ social life. They can only associate with other marginals like themselves, the gang who will accept them as they are, and show them ways to appease the pain of rejection and being misunderstood.

And this is where the violence in society stems from. Damaged children from a broken educational system that doesn’t cater for the results of poverty, disability, relationship breakdown, homelessness, inappropriate syllabus, inordinate pressure on staff and children alike, outdated schools and lack of investment, gossip and character assassination, institutional gaslighting, inappropriate ongoing dated attitudes that do more harm than good.

This is the kind of ‘Edjacashun’ we don’t need. My needs as a gifted child at school, hand up always wanting to give the answer, were so inadequately met by the gossip machine. My Home Economics teacher, whom I’d never met, called me to the front of the class before all the girls. She got me to sit on a chair facing the class. She then took two armfuls of empty boxes from the store cupboard, held them above me, and let the whole lot fall on my head and shoulders.

‘Ive heard all about you,’ she said, ‘you’re just a trouble maker! Well you can forget about that in my class!’ And I was told to go and sit down, my head and thoughts reeling. That was nearly 60 years ago, but the effects dogged me all through that grammar school. I felt singled out, a maverick, and became inured to trying to please people. It made relationships with authorities difficult, to say the least. But I got over it through the kind and conscious efforts of my Art and French teachers. As a result they became my favourite subjects, although I’d previously loved science, maths, English - all subjects.

You can probably see now why I’ve gone to such lengths to respond to your post.
I believe every child deserves a chance to evolve and grow. Every adult can change limiting beliefs. And every one of us is formed much more than we realise by our background. But we as teachers need more, ongoing training, in how not to let our own prejudices limit the choices of the very children who need them the most.

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For many years we kept a bottle of Googone for such emergencies. We now use a Lidl version of this…

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I try rubber gloves, which gives you a good grip. If that doesn’t work we have a knife with a thingy on the top which you wedge under the side of the lid and can break the vacuum with.

We have a plastic thingummy which breaks the seal, unfortunately after much use it too has become broken and the price of replacing it looks exorbitant at 15 euros.
It works well though.

Bottle opener (might be one on your tin opener - it’s like a curved hook of metal) just lifting slightly at 2 or 3 points round the lid might work. Might bend the lid a bit though so not for use if you want to retain the lid longterm